The "Things to Do" List

Third trimester... time to make an agenda.

1.) Talk to baby more. Apparently babies from about 30 weeks on are able to hear and sometimes even see, as much as one would be able to through lots of muscle, skin, and amniotic fluid. They begin their "learning" at this stage, and books read out loud to in vitro babies are responded to more favorably once they're out. Huh! If this is true, our baby will dance to the theme from The Office and King of Queens, and recognize the voices of talk radio almost as much as our own. (We did read "What's Wrong, Little Pookie" 3 times last night)

2.) Eat better Meaning healthier, more often, and in smaller portions. Space is tight in there, between baby and organs. Stuffing myself on JELLO has been proven to be possible. Who would have thought? Don't take me to a buffet, I will be a waste of money.

3.) Take it easier Round ligament pain, how you are a pain in my ass. Or rather, my sides. Getting up or bending down quickly often elicits a response that makes me think my ab muscles are ripping... but they're not, they're just sensitive and holding more than they're used too. Move slowly, lil' Momma.

4.) Swear less So Windo last summer would chide us that we'd never be fit parents because we swear too much. I say a$$ and sh*t as much as anyone, but apparently the occasional f-bomb when your car breaks down was just too much for him. Before he calls child services... Judge not lest ye be judged; his sister throws her kids into a dark closet and locks the door when they misbehave. I'm betting her peace of mind now won't be worth the shrink bills later.

But still, cutting down on the vulgarity is a great idea whether children are involved or not.

5.) Make lots and lots of lists
OCD. I love to see everything written down. Thus this blog. 'Nuff said.

SUBLIST... for the short term

a) Pack your brains out!
b) Call movers! Today!
c) Pick a color for the bedroom to be painted, and the small wall in the dining area. One decision down? Baby's room = 2 walls of AVOCADO. Why? It's neutral, it's calming yet lovely, absorbs light, and most of all... it's left over.
d) Buy a car. Sweet baby jane, that sounds easier than it is. Why doesn't Chrysler have more attractive vehicles this year? It would be so easy for us, and inexpensive, if only they hadn't blinded the designers after their separation from Daimler.
e) Pack for St. Louis, Michigan, etc... two trips on two adjacent weekends, what studs are we? One's on an AIRPLANE, maw!!! Yeeeeehaw! Okay, it's not Tahiti, but I like to travel, anywhere.

Off to the races!!

Statistical Goodness, Version 3.0

Twenty six - woaaah, TWENTY SEVEN weeks pregnant, today. That's almost 7 months. That's a viable baby. A viable 2 pound baby, but a few weeks in the NICU could do wonders for that. Holy moly.

I weight something around 165 lbs. Still not sure where I started, but it appears I've put on about 20 lbs, give or take 3. (mostly take)

Quit measuring my belly, because it's begun speaking for itself.

Quit measuring my big momma pillows, because they've got a mind of their own, too.

Feeling movement about a billion times a day, which is beautiful and wonderful and not painful or intrusive at all.

Maternity clothes purchased... countless. But tickled pink with every single item. Motherhood Maternity really is a decent little shop. Got to break out the tank top today, aye carumba.

Temperature outside: 75 (yay!)
Internal temperature: rising. Saby has begun to notice that I'm wandering around in my skivvies while he's wrapped up in a blanket. I'm not sweating or noticing anything much, besides a beautiful absence of that cold feeling in my feet. I will take it!

Bathing suits: 2, at a time. I have one big suit I bought on clearance, thinking it could be faux maternity... no such case, it's just too big. My regular swim suit is too tight. I thus wear the loose one over top of the tight one, and pretend I'm training for Sectionals and need more drag. (hello, 1996)

Maternity Bathing Suits: ZERO. Although I have my eye on two at the store. Beetches don't make the bottoms big enough... am wondering if I could be fired for mixing and matching a large bottom with a medium top. Will screw up inventory and make hell for manager, who I love. Not worth it. Will just swim bottomless.

(Just Kidding)

Registreeee

Just got back from another pointless but entertaining visit to Babies R Us. Babies R Us is located about 300 yards from where I currently sit, on my bed, typing this - thus the reason I had applied there for a job back in the early fall when we moved to this side of I-75. Unfortunately, they felt I was highly qualified for an assistant manager position (oooh, flattering!) down in Cincinnati (ooh, stupid!). And this is why I do not work at Babies R Us.

I like to wander around our mall-side neighborhood's strip mall atmosphere while drinking something cold from Starbucks. It gives me a feeling of purpose that I don't get laying around at home. And it's nice exercise. So today I wandered out to Starbucks, then to a Mazda dealership nearby for some extremely preliminary car shopping, and then out Mazda's back door through a mine-field of geese poop to Lowe's to check paint colors for our new apartment. (Side note: $30 worth of paint and a day's worth of effort have made our current apartment, a six-hundred something square foot, one bedroom living space, seem like the house we will never bother to buy. It's been a beautiful haven of serenity in a time of uncertainty and transient living, and I want to continue that vibe in our new place... with more paint) Too caffeinated (even decaf has it's perks) to go home yet, and needing to use a loo, I wandered back via Babies R Us.

Now, Babies R Us is a superstore of cheer and helpfulness; sort of a pastel Wal-Mart look with a cult-recruitment attitude. They are NICE. All the signs are done in a sort of feminine, adorable font. Things are purple and they play Sufjean Stevens on their music rotation. There are iddy-biddy clothes for the ladies and grannies to coo about, and enough big box items to challenge and entertain the dads. (I for the most part pack myself in with the men... when given the choice between a Cabbage Patch doll and a pair of Fisher Price plastic roller skates as a 5 year old, I chose the skates because I wanted to play with the switches and gears that would adjust the size. I still can't get an infant car seat off of the base, though.)

Today I had enough estrogen -perhaps I had used up all my testosterone sitting on a tractor at Lowes reading about color schemes and paint quality- to go directly back towards the nursery bedding sets. All the cutesy little crib bumpers and quilts and dust ruffles that people tend to think they need, simply because they are available. It's interesting... a friend bought a set at a steal of $80 (they run between $129 and $200+) and her son has never slept in his crib, to my knowledge. Now even the sources you're supposed to turn to for good information on safety... no names come to mind, thank you, Google for making me dumb... say that crib bumpers are unnecessary and even dangerous, quilts are strangulation hazards, and, well, they don't have any problems with dust ruffles at this point, but I supposed a predator could hide under your crib easier that way, if you want to be really paranoid. I have convinced myself that I do not want to take a part in the nursery bedding orgy and that my son or daughter is going to go through babyhood sleeping on a tightly fitted sheet in a hand-me-down luxury crib, in a well-accessorized room with at least one wall painted. And that's why I was there: to decide what color to paint that one wall would be.

See, having very little imagination and lots of expectations regarding the concept of a baby's nursery, I look to the very things I call rubbish for inspiration. Being unaware of the gender of our soon-to-be child is one x factor. The fact that baby's room will be mostly unoccupied by baby and serve as more of a transient home to guests and helpers for around 8 weeks is another thought. Animals or alphabets? Modern Ikea functionality or funky, friendly textures? Arrrrgghhh... Ikea! That's my other decorating demon. Knowing that it's just a few miles down the road makes me want to hitch-hike down for some cheap baby textile buying. Yeah. Not sure where I'm going with this, but basically when it all comes down to it, I am going to build the color scheme for this child's room from a simple, $14 fitted crib sheet.

I knew that when I walked out of Babies R Us today, but I wanted to justify the decision. So I pop online and try to get my friend Google to give me some backup. Self-doubt took over and I found myself searching the nursery bedding sets I liked on eBay. Prices were still high... high enough to bring back my cynicism. With great scorn, I turned to Google at last and searched "Baby bedding sets are crap", hoping to get an official press release from the surgeon general about how you will save your baby's life and millions of dollars by not giving in to the peer pressure. Instead, I found some dude's very entertaining blog:

http://www.westnet.com/~crywalt/pregnancy/morestuff.html

After reading his entry, I can proudly say our hand-me-down crib is a KinderKraft. Well, a 13 year old KinderKraft. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, surgeon general.

Big Bummer

Ahh, lousy news. My grandma down in Florida fell last night, and has broken her pelvis. Arrggh!

Very little news at this point, but she seems fine, although very uncomfortable. I don't know if it's constant or just a result of movement, but when my Uncle Bill carried her into the house, she passed out from the pain. Poor Helen!

I was online trying to find out some information about pelvis injuries, when I happened upon the blog of a lady who rides horses. Her horse threw her, apparently, and she ended up with a fractured pelvis. She's managed to get around decently in a wheelchair during her recovery, and I found this entry to be very entertaining, about going to the mall...

"When we approached the elevators to get back to the parking garage there was a line. Not a line of wheelchairs or even strollers. There was a line of fat people. Now, I’m not a svelte person but these were people in danger of having their abdomens filmed for a news report on obesity in America. They were sort of milling around until I pulled up in the wheelchair. Then they formed a line and studiously did not look at the person in the wheelchair. When the elevator came and they piled on and there was no room for the person in the wheelchair, they all looked away. The doors closed and the husband yelled, “You all should take the stairs!” For some reason the elevator came back to our level and opened with the same people on it. I looked pitiful and the husband said that if they had taken the stairs they’d have been there by now.

I think that we should take turns from now on going to the mall with the wheelchair. Shaming lazy people is a blast."

- http://www.spiritblog.net/?p=502

My grandma was just telling us how she wanted to get rid of the Rascal scooter that was taking up space after the passing of my grandfather... hopefully, if she still has it, she could get some use out of it while she heals. Poor sweet Grandma. She's going to turn 90 in October and she was planning to come to Port Clinton for a huge celebration in her honor, with a rented condo for she and Aunt Kathy to stay in, and lots of food and a family marathon of Jon and Kate Plus Eight (we're all fans now!). With a little luck and some helpful healing prayers maybe she could still make the trip. I want to go down and help, or at least be around to cheer her up, but she'll be recovering in the wilderness of northern Florida where first-time pregnant ladies are not advised to go in their final trimester (advised, by husbands and midwives, at least). *Sigh*

Jumpy, Swimmy, Kicky

Our baby has opened a clay-shooting range inside my womb. It has friends over between about 9 and 11:30 p.m., almost every night, and they jump, chase each other, and then I think they even do that thing teenagers do when you try to rock the car at stoplights... but instead they're rocking my uterus!

You can see it on the outside. It jolts. The whole thing will pop up, and then suddenly shift abruptly to the left. If it were a seismic plate you could measure it on the Richter scale, but sadly I am not a geological phenomenon and can only judge it by my own personal "holy CRAP!" meter. Last night was a new all-time high.

I think some are hiccups, because lots of the movement is relatively rhythmic. I like those a lot, because they are the closest to predictable. Otherwise, except for the higher likelihood of having all this jumping and bumping happen after dinner or before going to bed, I really have absolutely no control over what this child inside me does. And that is scary... interesting... even prophetic. It's not me. It's it's own person, even now.

International Baby Mania, Part 2

Well, Saby's friend's wife gave birth yesterday to a little baby girl. No c-section, yaaay!

Recently we've found out that cousin Sunil's sister is expecting her second. Now another Babi (Dhanya's sister) is expecting her first. And another India cousin, Reema (I think) is expecting her first as well.

When it rains, it pours, baby!

The Amazing Inflatable Transparent Woman

Long time, no write!

In whatever that gap of time has been, I've developed a lovely and very obviously pregnant belly. No more wondering by strangers if I'm potato shaped because of a thyroid condition, hump back, or just horrible posture... I'm probably just about at that point where strangers will try touching me soon. One prohibitive issue to that is that I seem to be carrying high, and my breasts seem to be consuming my belly. I don't want some grandfather in Cub Foods with 80-year old depth perception to lovingly pat one of my boobs!

Instead of the little pixie belly that you see on some (mostly taller) women, I've got a decently oval shaped bump that wants desperately to see what's going on around my chesticle area, and keeps expanding upwards. My fundus jumped over what seems like a span of 2 weeks from being below my belly button to knocking at the door of my second ribs. So the on-ramp leaving normal-shaped me, heading towards the hilly highway o' birthing, ascends from just beneath the band of my bra to a pinnacle that has yet to be measured, since it hurts my hip and butt to lay flat on my back :-)

Although, speaking of that... funny thing. It hurts (hurt being relative too... it is often quite uncomfortable) to lay on my back if my buttocks and hips are flat down on any surface... ultrasound table, exam table, bed, floor, futon, even couch. So I go to sleep, like many pregnant women, propped up into a very unnatural-yet-comfortable state with pillows: one behind my back, one about half under my belly, one between my legs, and one and a half under my head. With each subsequent visit to the bathroom in the night, one of these pillows drops off the priority list and usually physically drops off the bed. More often than not I wake up in the morning, FLAT on my back. Or sometimes even on my stomach - go figure. Now other than the hurty-painy thing, prego-chicks are not advised to sleep on their backs anytime after about 16 weeks, because the weight of the uterus can impede the flow of blood down a major vein heading to your legs and artery heading back out to your heart. Dizziness and freaked-out, oxygen deprived babies can apparently result. Other sources say to sleep however you are comfortable. Apparently my body is listening to the latter, especially after about 4am.

And waking up. That's been interesting as well. Thanks to our Hypnobirthing class, we have these fabulous cds to which we can listen - one is called "Birthing Affirmations" and is followed by the Rainbow Relaxation script, which leads you through all these different visualizations that help you relax in order to have a more pain-free labor and birth. Both are very relaxing, although the first makes Saby giggle because there are three different instances of "My cervix is opening as my body prepares to bring my baby into the world." Even in class, I heard the Rainbow Relaxation script about 1/4th of the way through, because to me, it just screams "GO TO SLEEEEEEP!" So listening to these at bedtime, while drifting off to sleep, has resulted (for me at least) in the most delicious, beautiful slumber. Waking me up is like bringing someone out of a coma. I've slept through my alarm, Saby's alarm, thunderstorms, and most recently, the temperature of our room dropping to about 45 after I'd left the window open with the fan in it. Saby "Hot-Bunz" George, who runs a constant body temperature about 10 degrees higher than me, woke up freezing. He stumbled around the bed to shut the window and stopped, expecting to see either my lifeless, frozen body on the other side, or an empty spot I'd abandoned in order to go and crawl into the oven... but there I was, completely and utterly oblivious to any climate change and hibernating like a bear.

As I drifted back to dreamworld this morning after Saby left for work, I wondered how long this beautiful ability to sleep is going to last. Even after Saby goes, I am definitely no longer alone in bed... there are two of us, and more, we joke. Saby's theory is that our baby not only is very active, but is also very naughty, and has friends sneak over late at night. They then stay awake playing even after we've gone to sleep. This morning, our child seems to have been hosting some sort of track and field event with it's friends. (Maybe a March of Dimes event?) I was very dimly aware that my belly was jumping - literally JUMPING - on an axis perpendicular to my body, as if Spampy baby were laying across the uterus and doing some variation of a tap dance routine where arms, legs and head would all jolt out at the same time. Ka-poom. Ka-poom. Like a very violent muscle twitch. I'm not sure if the kid calmed down or whether sleep just got the better of me, but it really is pretty amazing having somebody inside of you, even if they are running relays with friends.

It's doing it now, too!!

BUT, the strangest new development I've noticed is that I'm the amazing transparent woman. Like those plastic figures that are part fertility goddess, part anatomy-teaching tool, where you can see all of their veins? That's me. Life size. I stepped out of the shower yesterday and was giving myself the visual once over and stretch mark lotion rub down. Once upon a time I had noticed crazy veins running to and from my growing boobies... well them veins are EVERYWHERE now. Not varicose veins, mind you. My actual, normal veins and arteries must be running at extra high capacity, thanks to all the extra bloody pregnancy makes you have, and that combined with the freakish paleness of spring are resulting in my stomach and sides looking like a Rand McNally atlas of Kentucky.

So between that and the growth spurt, I feel like the fabulous inflatable transparent woman! Come see me grow!!

6 Months

Holy crap, I'm 6 months pregnant! Whooopie!
I would sing my 6 months pregnant song but it doesn't translate to the written word very well.
I chose this time to start swimming again... snuck into Dayton Sharks practice but just hung out in a lane by myself, doing laps of kicking and arms, barely ever both at the same time though as I didn't feel that ambitious.
Good times. Bought my first nursing top, too. It was miraculously returned by some no-longer medium sized woman one morning that I worked, and I had that bad boy in the office for myself.
That's all!